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Creating jobs and cutting taxes is real economic stimulus

Perhaps it’s time to embrace the rich. Politicians have been attacking them pretty steadily for a year now, unless you’re a big union or a financial institution with former employees working in the Obama administration, and things just got worse. It has become a surprisingly radical concept and clearly not one ripped from the pages of the New York Times.

I’m just saying that leaving people with companies that have employees and create jobs with a little bit of money might just cause them to hire a few folks. We’re told that doesn’t matter since the president now has a plan to help the middle class and create jobs, but it appears to have been slide ruled out at the Marx — Engels Institute for Oppressively Silly Government and will create more bureaucracy to administer than good it will ever do for the economy.

In reality, as hard as it is to endure bubbleheaded heiresses, felonious sports stars and dim-witted entertainers collecting and spending embarrassing amounts of money, even they create more jobs than government.

For instance, let’s say Paris Hilton has a pink Bentley (she does) and since that color on that car is a crime against nature, when she sells it the buyer will pay someone to repaint it. In the meantime, her careening about Los Angeles and running into random light poles, paparazzi and other vehicles will create many jobs for body shops, criminal defense attorneys and light pole manufacturers.

Similarly, when some ridiculously paid athlete decides to install a basketball court in the center of his Cherry Creek mansion, workers and materials will be required. Upon foreclosure, the new buyer will employ many of the same craftsman to remove the basketball court and other unusual upgrades that destroy the value of the home.

As facetious as this might seem there is great truth in the proposition that no matter how much we critique others’ salaries, as long as they are not derived from the public trough, they usually end up being good for the average worker who makes his living off others’ desires for goods and services and their ability to pay for them.

In Colorado for decades we decried the lack of a dynamic industry, the lack of which kept wages low and caused many young people to look elsewhere for high-paying jobs. The energy trades managed to change that and gave many young and older workers the opportunity to directly benefit from wages far above what had existed before the industry’s arrival.

Now, a combination of market price, uncertain regulations and flirtation with a radical environmental agenda that felt everyone would be better off living in a hollow tree has threatened strides made over the last 10 years.

The indirect effect of higher local wages is just as telling as the original paycheck since recipients usually went right out and bought things like new trucks, lift kits, wheel packages, ATVs and expensive electronics. All sensible purchases to me and while some might find some a bit frivolous, they support all manner of indirect recipients from car washes to video rentals. And here is the important part, the people who earned this money decided where to spend it, an approach that has shown itself a much better system for economic growth than anything dreamed up in some legislative drafting office in Washington or Denver.

As national politicians dither and our state legislature gathers to consider taxing soda, candy and sleeping to support government, let’s instead demand a way to let folks keep more of their own money. Maybe they’ll buy a four-wheeler and actually help the economy.